Japan Day, a culture festival expected to attract 1 million people Saturday in the German city of Dusseldorf, was set to climax with a huge fireworks show after dusk.

Dusseldorf is the one of Europe's main centres of Japanese commercial investment, with a large community of Japanese executives and their families served by schools, shops and culture facilities.

Saturday's programme along the bank of the Rhine river included a competition to write the best manga, Japanese-style comic, a kimono fashion show and Japanese pop concerts, made all the tastier with Japanese food. Martial arts and origami were also on show.

"We're showing a mixture of the modern and the traditional Japan," said Marco Lippert of Dusseldorf Marketing, one of the organizers.

Two sound stages were running a non-stop 15-hour programme of entertainment by 850 Japanese performers including a concert by the four-man band Hinokiya for the mixed German and Japanese crowd.

Lippert said some young European fans had gone to extraordinary lengths to immerse themselves in manga culture.

"They dress up as their manga heroes. It's not just putting on a costume. They try to exactly imitate the way the character behaves."

The evening fireworks show was billed as one of the biggest ever in Germany, with about 4,000 sky-rockets and other fireworks set to go up in smoke. (dpa)